


Homeward Bound

by Kablob, mylordshesacactus



Series: Star Trek: Challenger [3]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: Gen, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 02:04:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20845733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: 1.03 | Wounded, mourning, and alone in the dark, Challenger and her crew brace for another unexpected encounter--and take time to heal both themselves and one other.





	1. Chapter 1

[X](https://youtu.be/FpdxvL61zr8?list=LLtCjrYmG1qqxEIjzhIwysBA)

Natalia tended to wake up early. Her instructors had always approved; it befitted an officer to rise early and model punctuality, they’d said. 

Personally, she’d found that a bit stuffy and formal even for her. She just enjoyed having the extra time before Alpha Shift to settle her mind. It was nice to have privacy in the officers’ showers and not have to rush through breakfast. Besides, it gave her a chance to review her schedule for the day, brush her hair properly, and make sure her uniform was clean and crisp.

...Yes, all right, she admitted to herself as she straightened her sleeves and gave her jumpsuit a final once-over for nonexistent wrinkles. It was possible Matos had a point about her level of spontaneity.

She nodded to the handful of crewmen she passed making her way through the corridors. A glance into the mess hall found it nearly empty; it didn’t really start to fill up until about twenty-five minutes before Alpha Shift went on duty. Natalia had time. She had a datapad of reports she’d spent the evening summarizing; there was no reason she couldn’t duck up to the situation room and leave them for her captain before breakfast. It would be one less thing to check off her list later.

The door to the situation room slid open with a soft hiss, and Natalia balked when she realized she wasn’t alone.

“...August seventh, 2154.”

Natalia grimaced and held her hands up apologetically, moving to close the door again; but Matos just smiled and waved her in, tapping a finger against her lips as she continued her log.

“The situation remains largely unchanged,” she informed the computer. “While stress and damage to several primary components of the warp core itself prevent us from achieving anything higher than Warp 2 for any significant length of time, Tisarr and our Engineering staff have successfully replaced the dilithium crystal and restored warp functionality to the ship.”

Matos waved and smiled as Natalia sat down. “After that unfortunate glitch yesterday involving a sensor ghost of twenty-three Klingon birds of prey, _ Challenger’s _ secondary long-term sensor array is now functioning without incident. I have no doubt we owe this to Lieutenant-Commander Hasdai reportedly banning mirrors, ladders, salt, and anything containing the numbers thirteen, four, seventeen or nine from sensor control.”

Natalia raised her eyebrows; Matos responded with a weary look that said _ I also wish I was joking. _

“I received notice from Nurse Srisati just this morning that the worst of our injured from the pirate confrontation have been released from Sickbay, which I’m confident will have a remarkable impact on both morale and efficiency. The promise from the chef staff that having cold storage back means the scheduled Sundae Sunday event can proceed as originally planned will help as well, I don’t doubt.” 

Natalia chuckled, and Matos grinned at her as she tapped the recording off. She had her breakfast on a plate in front of her, but seemed in no hurry to eat, and leaned back in her chair as she picked up a sturdy coffee mug bearing _ Challenger’s _ insignia and took a sip.

“You’re not on duty yet, Captain,” Natalia observed. It was a bit early in the morning to be making log entries.

Matos raised an eyebrow. “I’m not the only one. Have you eaten?”

“Not yet,” said Natalia. “I wanted to drop off the repair updates and situation reports…” She trailed off at her captain’s reproachful look and had to smile as Matos picked up a bagel, tore it in half, and placed it in front of her.

“I think reviewing the repair logs can wait until your shift has actually started, Commander,” she said curtly. “Let’s not get into a pattern of letting you work yourself to death.”

It was an unnecessary but sensible sentiment, and Natalia didn’t argue with it. There was a companionable silence for several minutes. Natalia was obediently eating her bagel; Matos, for her part, was gazing up at the framed photograph that was the situation room’s only ornamentation.

“You know, Commander,” she said, eyes never leaving the timeless, unknowing smiles of the crew of the STS-51L. Her voice was contemplative. “It’s occurred to me in the past that naming an exploration ship after a shuttle best known for being lost with all hands might have been tempting fate somewhat.”

For a moment, Natalia glanced up at the memorial to their namesake as well. Then, expression carefully neutral, she looked down at her long list of repair data and back up at Captain Matos.

“I have no idea what you mean,” she said blandly.

The distant look left Matos’ eyes as she snorted. She sat up, taking a bite of her own bagel as she reached out for the datapad. “All right, Commander,” she said. “An early day it is. Let’s start with Esther’s analysis of what on earth happened to the sensors yesterday, I’d like to avoid a repeat of _ that _ if at all—”

The instant she touched the datapad, a shrill alarm blared through the situation room.

_ “Captain to the bridge,” _ said the gamma-shift watch officer over the intercom. _ “Multiple unidentified contacts astern.” _

Very, very slowly, Captain Matos covered her face with her hands.

* * *

There was tension on the bridge as they watched the plot.

Well, Sofia allowed. This was certainly one way to get Alpha Shift awake.

“Anything?” she asked quietly.

Esther’s reply was blunt. “It’s weird, sir.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant-Commander.”

“I wish I could tell you more.” Esther shook her head sharply. “In a few minutes we should have visual, but I can’t get any IFF on these ships.”

Yurovsky frowned. “Are we certain they _ are _ ships?” she asked. “Is it possible this is just an asteroid field, space debris?”

Another sharp negative twitch of a messy ponytail. “Not with readings like this, Commander. Scanners are picking up _ massive _ lifesigns, and we’re tracking movement under power; these patterns happening by chance is a mathematical impossibility. It _ has _ to be a vessel of some sort, but I’m not getting energy signatures.”

Ensign Sandoval fiddled with dials and adjusted a slider a fraction of a centimeter on his console. “Nothing here either, Captain.”

“What were you working on, Ensign?”

He tapped a button experimentally and sighed at the lack of any apparent result. “I was hoping I could identify comm chatter and get Esther her IFF from that, sir,” he explained. “That many ships coordinating so closely, they have to be communicating. Every species has slightly different comm systems, and slightly different patterns of frequency bursts on top of that. It’s usually an effective way of feeling out a ship’s identity, even if you’re not lucky enough to tap an open channel and get a language sample for the translation matrix.”

Sofia inclined her head. “But?”

Sandoval continued frowning at the frequency readout and trying to adjust his sensors. “They’re definitely _ talking _ to each other, Captain,” he said slowly. “There’s some kind of frequency passing between members of the group. But it doesn’t match any known electronic comm frequency, and the translators can’t analyze it. It’s either so complex it’s overloading their capabilities, or it’s not a language.”

“Definitely a form of communication, but not necessarily a form of language,” Sofia repeated. “It might be simple location beacons.” There were at least fifty of the contacts; any fleet of that size, travelling at such close range, would have to have systems in place to prevent accidental collisions.

The ships didn’t appear to be hostile, at least. They were coming up on _ Challenger _ from behind, yes; but not at any particular speed, and their course hadn’t changed since entering her sensor range.

That could mean several things. Either they hadn’t reacted to _ Challenger’s _ presence because they had no interest in harming her; they hadn’t reacted to _ Challenger’s _ presence because she would be easily blown out of space the moment they entered range; or their long-range sensors were so much better that they had noticed _ Challenger _ from outside her own range, coordinated an attack, and were in the process of executing it.

Sofia was an optimist, but she wasn’t going to bet the lives of her surviving crew that it was the first option. There was no need for a red alert, not yet, but she had put condition yellow in effect for the whole ship until they knew what was following them.

They certainly weren’t very fast. She’d ordered Lieutenant Lehtonen to hold their course steady; no sense in alarming a potentially hostile force by making any unexpected moves, nor did she want to look as though they were attempting to run away. But they were only at Warp 2, and the unidentified fleet had been following them for half an hour and was only just beginning to enter the range of visual sensors. They would overrun Challenger in about three hours, but still; if these were starships, what could they possibly be doing all the way out here at such a low warp? She doubted whether they’d _ all _ gotten in boxing matches with Klingon warships.

A light flashed on Esther’s console. “We should have visual now, Captain.”

“Onscreen.”

It wasn’t instantaneous, at this range; for a few seconds the viewscreen was black, then filled with static as Esther tried to refine the scanners. Finally, it blurred and focused on a collection of tiny white dots. A few typed commands, and one of the dots expanded to fill the screen.

The bridge crew stared at it for a minute.

“Visual contact is less informative than I could wish,” Sofia determined.

“No clue what you mean,” muttered Esther. “We’re obviously being followed by blurry dots. Let me enhance...”

The dot resolved itself into a dot of slightly higher definition.

Sofia frowned and sat forward. The image was actually very clean; it was just that the objects didn’t have much to enhance.

Aleksi looked over his shoulder at her, half-raising his hand like he was in an Academy classroom. She made eye contact, arched a brow to let him know she’d noticed and wasn’t going to mention it, and said, “Thought, Lieutenant?”

Flushing slightly, he yanked his hand back down and cleared his throat.

“Those aren’t like any ship I’ve ever seen, ma’am,” he said. “That’s all.”

“He’s not wrong,” Esther commented. “A warp bubble but no warp engine signatures, no electronic footprint. I can’t even tell what the hull is made of.”

Aleksi nodded, encouraged. “That too. But I mean...look at them. No nacelles, either. They don’t have visible ports, although I guess they could be a one-way armor. No weapons bays or grapplers…”

“Visible,” Yurovsky cautioned. “Just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean they don’t have any, sir.”

“Noted,” Sofia agreed. She had no intention of becoming a paranoid reactionary who viewed the unknown as a threat; the unknown was the reason they were out here. But she wasn’t going to get reckless and complacent, either. “All the same, we can’t outrun them, so let’s at least get a closer look. Helm, reduce speed, Warp 1.5 let’s say. Let them catch us up.”

If Aleksi had reservations about the order, he didn’t voice them. A gentle twitch at the throttle and an almost imperceptible shift in the way _ Challenger _ hummed around them signalled the reduction in speed, and they watched as the fleet began gaining on them faster. Sofia traced her eyes over the featureless ships.

Not featureless, she corrected herself. That was her assumptions talking. The surface looked, visually and according to Esther’s scanners, to be completely smooth; no discernable individual plates, no seams. They appeared a sort of ice-blue color on the screen, not quite white but pale enough to fool you at first glance. If she focused, she could just barely make out what looked like facets in the surface; the ‘dots’ weren’t convex, but rather a series of angular planes.

They resembled nothing so much as precision-carved chunks of masonry, floating in space, moving at will.

“Can we hail them, Ensign?” She wasn’t certain why her voice came out hushed. It just...felt appropriate.

Ensign Sandoval bent over his console. After a long minute, he looked up and shook his head.

“I can send signals in their direction,” he said. “But I don’t know if they can hear us at all. Their communication systems might be too advanced or just too different for ours to interface with.”

She dipped her head in acceptance. “Thank you, Ensign. It was worth a try. When they get a bit closer, perhaps—”

She was interrupted by a sudden, sharp intake of breath from Esther’s station.

“Captain,” she said, and the breathlessness in her voice filled Sofia with a mixture of curiosity and alarm. She’d never actually seen Esther Hasdai shocked before.

“Is everything all right, Lieutenant-Commander?”

Esther covered her mouth for a second, took a deep breath, and managed to pull herself together.

“I was scanning for lifesigns again,” she said, and her voice was still trembling oddly. “Taking advantage of the shorter range. I was thinking that if we could identify what kind of aliens we were dealing with, it might help us figure out their capabilities.”

Sofia nodded slowly. “All right…”

Esther finally looked over, and Sofia was struck by the way the girl’s eyes shone, the wild joy on her face. “I thought my scanners were being blocked by the hull, I thought the crew’s individual lifesigns were being blended by the interference and that’s why I couldn’t pick them out, but. Captain, they only have one lifesign each!”

“A solo vessel?” suggested Yurovsky. “It would be unusual to have them at this size.”

Sofia hadn’t looked away from Esther’s face. “I don’t think that’s it, Commander.”

Esther gazed at the viewscreen in abject wonder.

_ “Baruch atah Adonai,” _ she breathed. _ “Eloheinu Melech Ha'olam, Misha’neh HaBriyot. _ They’re _ alive.” _


	2. Chapter 2

**Captain’s Log, August 9th, 2154**

We have now been travelling in company with the creatures for just under two days; for reasons as of yet unclear to us, the group slowed to match our pace once it reached our position, and seems content to remain with us for the time being. We have identified a total of forty-seven individuals in the...fleet? Our Science officer has been using the term “pod”. 

Whatever the terminology, each individual has been assigned an electronic tag, and our Science department is eagerly gathering data on this new form of life.

The creatures appear to be crystalline in structure, though the substance itself defies our scanners. We have yet to observe any kind of feeding or reproductive behavior, though the short time window could easily explain that. Earlier today Astrometrics brought to our attention several individuals in the pod with crystal structures that appear weaker and less tightly-packed; these individuals are also smaller than the others by a statistically significant degree. The current hypothesis is that we have identified the pod’s juveniles.

Within the pod’s protection, we continue to make what repairs we can and get our house in order. This discovery, and the opportunity to do the kind of exploration Starfleet was designed for rather than fight for our lives, has rejuvenated  _ Challenger _ and her crew seemingly overnight.

Some, naturally, more than others.

* * *

_ “Baby space whales!” _

“She’s been like this for two days,” said Jae.

Atsa grinned as Esther tore into her chicken schnitzel. “I know,” he said. “It’s great, isn’t it?”

Jae shook her head fondly at her commanding officer. “We don’t even know for certain that they  _ are _ babies. They could be elderly, or sick, it might be a...congenital condition? Or whatever the equivalent is, I guess.”

“I know!” Esther beamed. “We don’t know anything about them, any explanation could be possible! Isn’t it amazing?”

Atsa rested his elbows on the table. “I have to ask,” he said. “Why  _ whales? _ You keep calling them that.”

Jae shushed him. “Let her have this.”

Esther threw a noodle at her second-in-command.  _ “Space whales,” _ she emphasized. “This is  _ the _ sci-fi trope, Atsa. This is my second-greatest childhood dream, don’t ruin it.”

“What’s the greatest, then?”

“Carving something into a moon with a giant laser,” she answered promptly. “But Starfleet won’t let me.”

_ Sure it is, _ he thought but didn’t say. No one who’d been around Esther Hasdai at any point in the past 48 hours would believe that she was only excited because of a sci-fi trope.

Honestly, they all felt a bit of that awe. It was hard not to.

“I just…” Her hands fluttered in midair as she gave a deep, contented sigh. “This changes  _ everything. _ Think about the implications for the kind of life that’s possible in the universe, different kinds of intelligence…”

“I’ve been studying those communication signals,” Atsa told the table. “I still haven’t been able to identify a language structure, but I’m hoping I might be able to decipher what the frequencies mean.”

“Do you know they actually each generate an extremely localized biological warp bubble?” said Esther. “That’s how they move without a propulsion system. It’s so much more refined than ours, too, except for the little ones, the things we could learn!”

Jae patted Esther’s hand, plucked the noodle out of her own hair, and ate it.

The intercom chimed, and Dr. Atakan’s voice said  _ “Lieutenant-Commander Hasdai, please come to Sickbay when convenient, thank you.” _

Esther looked surprised, but glanced at her empty plate and shrugged. Atsa blinked. His mom had always said he ate like a horse, but Esther had obviously just performed some kind of black magic, because nobody could  _ possibly _ eat that fast. “I guess I’d better see what that was all about. See you back at the lab, minion.” Jae gave a mocking salute without looking up from her lunch.

Atsa checked the time and stood. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “I’ve got an appointment.”

Esther only paused for a second before bowing and giving an after-you gesture with one hand, but she did look sideways at him as they walked down to Sickbay.

“You all right, kid?” she asked.

“You’re two years older than me, Esther,” he pointed out.

“I am an ancient and unknowable force of brilliance,” retorted Esther. “Seriously though, Atsa. Everything okay? You don’t have to tell me, but you  _ can, _ yeah?”

It was a...casual sort of concern, not smothering, which was sweet. Atsa smiled at her.

“I’m fine,” he promised. “I just promised Dr. Atakan I’d help her with something.”

Esther’s gaze sharpened with intrigue at that, but they’d already arrived, and Atsa waved and ducked away before she could ask.

* * *

Oh, something was  _ up _ with that man.

Tisarr was sitting on a biobed, which caused Esther some brief concern until the Caitian twitched her tail in a friendly manner and waved to them. She was wearing a spare Starfleet jumpsuit with no patches, which was a new development. Maybe it was laundry day for the Caitians. But she certainly didn’t seem injured or sick, which meant Esther was free to continue being nosy about whatever Atsa and the doc were up to.

“Ensign Sandoval,” Dr. Atakan greeted him. “You’re early, but everything has been set up.”

“Laundry day?” said Atsa, gesturing at Tisarr’s borrowed jumpsuit. Great minds.

Dr. Atakan’s lips twitched, but she let Tisarr handle the question. After a pause for the translator unit to do its thing, Tisarr meowed something. Esther was nosy enough to rubberneck until she saw the readout:  _ The Healer recommended loose-fitting durable clothing. _

Interesting.

“I arranged for noise insulation and darkroom lighting in these quarters,” Dr. Atakan continued, handing Tisarr a padd. To Atsa, she said, “The injection should begin to take effect in thirty minutes. She knows the basics, but I thought it might be best if you demonstrated the software for her. I’ve never used it myself.”

“Of course, don’t mention it,” Atsa replied readily. “Sometime when I have a bit of shore leave, do you think…”

Dr. Atakan smacked his arm lightly with her padd. “Ensign,” she informed him, mock sternly. “This is a controlled substance. Captain Matos and I have made an exception under the circumstances, but—”

Atsa held his hands up in surrender. “You can’t blame me for trying!” he said. Then, “Come on, Tisarr, I’ll show you how it works. It’s a great bit of software, really user-friendly, you should have no problem…”

Esther glanced between the retreating pair and the ship’s doctor with narrowed eyes.

“What are they—”

“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Dr. Atakan informed her crisply. Then, glancing over with a slight smile, “I’m sure she’ll tell you herself in about a week. She wants it to stay quiet in case the results aren’t what we’re hoping for, so please try to keep it to yourself.”

“‘Course.” Esther was nosey and abrasive, but she had  _ morals. _ Besides, she was pretty sure she already knew what it was, and she wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. “Something I can help you with?”

Dr. Atakan gestured for Esther to follow her, and led them across the room. A young man with blue piping was leaning casually against the doorway into the CMO’s office, and he straightened as they approached.

“Ensign Nick Roosevelt,” Dr. Atakan said by way of introduction, “Lieutenant-Commander Hasdai. Ensign Roosevelt was in the Astrometrics corridor during the boarding.”

Standing up a little straighter, Esther held out a hand to the guy. “You lot did good work.”

“She’s offering a handshake,” Atakan informed him, and the ensign jumped slightly and held his hand out. Esther adjusted and shook it.

“Sorry, Ensign,” she said.

“No problem, sir.” Just this once, Esther decided to let the ‘sir’ thing slide. “Dr. Atakan thought you might be able to help me, sir.”

Twice was way too much. “Don’t call me  _ sir _ , minion. What can I do you for?”

“Well, sir,” Roosevelt said, which had to be intentional. “I can’t see. Turns out white-hot disruptor shrapnel’s bad for your eyes or something.”

“If we’d had better lines of transit during the attack, immediate intervention might have saved more of the nerves,” Atakan explained. “As it is, there’s been as much healing now as is likely to happen—Ensign, you said you have some light-dark vision, yes?”

Roosevelt wiggled his hand. “Sort of. Not enough to do more than help me not walk into doorframes.”

Esther cocked her head as she started thinking. “Are you looking for ideas?” she said. “Because I had an electromagnetic rocket-powered wheelchair turned down the other day, I’m not sure I can top that.”

It made Roosevelt laugh and Atakan roll her eyes.

“I’ve talked a lot with Dani Vasquez from Phase Cannon Control,” said Roosevelt. “She’s letting me borrow one of her spare canes until Engineering can fabricate some and she’s sent me pretty great information, she’s got me handled. I’m good, I just need a screen reader.”

Esther paused.

“Sorry,” she said slowly. “Are you saying Starfleet doesn’t have screen readers on our consoles  _ already?” _

“That’s really not—”

“We have faster-than-light travel but not  _ useable screen readers? _ When we get back to Earth I’m gonna—stop laughing, asshole, I’m trying to plot a murder here—”

“It’s fine,” he said. “No, actually  _ Challenger _ ’s software is pretty good. It’s just that I work in Astrometrics. Cannon Control, the consoles have a lot more physical buttons and dials and the readout information is more text and number-based; my job is about star maps and 3D modelling, so what we have now isn’t good enough.”

Esther hummed, already thinking it over. “Well, it all starts as raw data anyway,” she muttered to herself. “It’s not like I don’t know my department’s code language. Allocate certain patterns of data clusters and link them to a set of spoken descriptors, maybe a pidgin shorthand if it gets too unwieldy. Tone differentials for spectrum analysis? I wish we could rig some kind of immediate tactile feedback but I don’t think we have the space...”

Vaguely, she heard Dr. Atakan says something to the effect of Lieutenant Commander Hasdai seeming to have it in hand. She didn’t pay much attention. She was thinking.

“Anomaly analysis could be a problem,” she said out loud. “Hard to know what audio descriptions to assign to data patterns we don’t know exist yet, but I’ll bet I can find a way around that. Can I see your station? I’ll hook it to the 3D printer in Engineering, it’s not ideal but for a long-term problem it’ll come in handy.”

“I’ve been playing around with 3D tactile feedback,” Roosevelt agreed. “I’m not very good at reading the results yet, but Vasquez says I’ll pick it up.”

Esther hummed and took a swig from her sports bottle. Helped her concentrate. “Tell me what you need and how you’re handling things now and I’ll get you something in, I don’t know, probably twelve hours? We’ll give it a shakedown run whale-watching and you can tell me what doesn’t work…”


	3. Chapter 3

The ironic thing about Aleksi Lehtonen, thought Atsa, was that he looked like a freaking Viking.

Seriously. The messy wheat-blonde hair, the big blue eyes, the modest but respectable goatee he’d gotten around uniform regs. Aleksi could have stepped off a longboat carrying an axe and a basket of fish or something and nobody would have questioned it. 

Until they talked to him, obviously. There hadn’t been a lot of time to socialize since this voyage started, but the bridge crew had gotten to know each other pretty well, and Aleksi was a bundle of nerves wrapped in anxiety and stuffed into a sack with a rattlesnake. They liked him.

Atsa gave a short, friendly whistle and raised a hand, waving to catch Aleksi’s attention. It was a little harder than usual even in the mess hall; a bunch of tables had been pulled together off to one side, which interrupted the line of sight. Aleksi gave a shy grin and waved back, slipping around the outside of the room and carefully over to the table, and Atsa laughed in delight at the  _ other _ reason Aleksi would never be able to pass himself off as a bloodthirsty warrior.

The pretty little cloudy-grey cat dropped obligingly from Aleksi’s shoulder and onto the table, rubbing against his arm before curling her tail around her paws. 

She purred quietly as Atsa, charmed, reached out to scratch under her chin. “And this lovely lady would be...Momma? That’s not it.”

“Moomin,” Aleksi corrected him. He unclipped his little black leash from Moomin’s harness. “She’s a pretty girl. Yes, you are, baby. I feel sorry for her being cooped up in my quarters all the time,” he explained. “I set up shelves for her, but now that we’re not in emergency standby anymore she needs to get out a bit. We go for walks in the park when we’re on Earth.”

Moomin yawned and sprawled out across the table, batting playfully at her master with sheathed claws. She only had the one front paw, Atsa realized; her right foreleg was missing, as was the eye on that side. There were hints of faded scarring under her thick fur, but whatever had caused it was obviously long-forgotten.

“Weedwhacker,” Aleksi said, noticing where Atsa’s attention had gone. “When she was a kitten. The shelter said it was probably an accident, but nobody was sure.”

“Aw, baby,” Atsa murmured. Moomin had rolled back right-ways-up and was, apparently, luxuriating in the knowledge that she was a cat. He reached out and scratched the soft fur behind her ears, making her purr again. “Who could hurt you on purpose? It had to be an accident.”

“That’s what I like to think,” admitted Aleksi. “She’s my good girl, aren’t you, Moomin?”

The appearance of the cat, Atsa realized, had sent a ripple of soft gasps and cooing through the mess hall. “She’s popular,” he warned them both. Aleksi got nervous as the center of attention…

Not this time, though, apparently. Aleksi just grinned wider and said, “She should be! She’s perfect!”

That got some laughs from people sitting close enough to overhear.

“Every cat is perfect,” commented a woman in Engineering colors.

Esther, who was sitting in the big group of tables, looked over her shoulder. “But some cats are more perfect than others?” she suggested wryly. Then, “She’s gorgeous!”

“Thanks.” Aleksi’s ears were pink, but he seemed happy. “Want to say hi?”

This suggestion was met with immense enthusiasm, carefully muted solely out of an attempt to not frighten the cat. Aleksi stood and half-turned away from Atsa’s table, then gave a cheerful two-note whistle and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. Moomin jumped gracefully onto his shoulders and allowed herself to be transferred to the clump of tables across the room.

To Atsa’s surprise, Dr. Atakan was there, just a few seats down from Esther. They didn’t normally see her here during dinner hour.

“Hello,” she said, smiling and holding out a finger near Moomin’s nose. This was sniffed delicately and then approved of with a casual rub of the chin. “Aleksi, she’s beautiful! What’s she called?”

“Moomin,” he said, all insecurity gone in light of the chance to talk about his cat. “She’s a dilute tortie-and-white domestic longhair.”

While Moomin soaked up the group’s admiration, Atsa moved to sit near Esther. “So, what’re you guys up to over here?” he asked.

Esther took a drink and sat back, spreading her arms wide.

“Ensign Sandoval,” she said with a dramatic flourish, “Welcome to the second official meeting of the When The Fuck Is Sunset Club.”

“We’re not called that,” Dr. Atakan assured him. Esther waved off this technicality.

“Long story short,” she said with less showmanship. “Two Jews and a Muslim walk into a taco bar a few weeks before shipping-out, and we were talking shop about how people have handled space travel before. Y’know. When’s sunset when you’re seventeen lightyears from Earth? Do you use ship’s time, do you sync a clock with the last place your feet touched Earth or with Jerusalem or Mecca or wherever? They’ve all been the official position at least once.”

Someone piped up, “The pork thing!” and the entire table groaned.

“Yeah,” said Esther. “Or if an alien species fills the same ecological niche as a pig but with no physical resemblance, can we eat it. Jury’s still out on that one. Thanks for bringing it up again, Leah, it’s been awhile since I had a good migraine! So someone figured—who was it?”

“Tony,” said three people at once. A man in Tactical piping waved from halfway down the table.

“Yeah, that bastard. Tony figured some folks would like to get together every so often, compare notes.”

“Get a sense of community,” Dr. Atakan added quietly. A murmur of agreement went up and down the table, and Esther toasted the doctor with her sports bottle in a rare moment of deference.

“It kinda spread,” she said, and gestured down the table. “So we all ended up just getting together sometimes when we want to crowdsource something, comparing religious calendars, dietary restrictions, that kind of thing. Came in handy when the shipboard clock lost its marbles, hooking people up with battery-powered clocks. Got a lot in common, a lot that isn’t, kumbaya, etcetera.” Something must have shown on his face, because Esther paused and added, “You’re welcome if you want in.”

He winced. It was kindly meant and he appreciated the sentiment behind it, but…

“I’ll pass.” He didn’t think anyone in the group would take offense at his reasons— _ my beliefs are my own, my people’s traditions are our own, you’re very kind but none of you are Navajo _ —but they apparently didn’t need to hear them at all.

“‘Course. No disrespect meant, kid.”

_ “You’re two years older than me!” _

* * *

**Captain’s Log, August 12th, 2154**

We have now been in the company of the alien pod for five days. A shuttlecraft expedition has produced readings appearing to confirm our hypothesis about the smaller individuals; they are, indeed, juveniles.

The behavior of the creatures is intriguing. Since overtaking  _ Challenger, _ they have slowed their travel speed to match ours. Lieutenant Lehtonen performed a series of experiments over the past few days, and the results were conclusive. The pod is, indeed, slowing itself or speeding up according to our current speed.

Theories abound as to possible explanations.

* * *

Esther Hasdai toppled out of the turbolift.

Sofia didn’t bother hiding the way her lips twitched. At this point, they’d been through enough that she didn’t feel a need to project false detachment for the sake of her crew. She doubted whether Esther would notice anyway. 

Well, Esther seemed immune to professional detachment in general, but especially in the moment. Her hair was in more disarray than usual, ever-present sports bottle bouncing against her ribs as she tried and failed to get through the turbolift doors before they’d quite managed to open, and her eyes gleamed.

“It’s the warp bubble!” she declared, triumphant.

Sofia blinked, aware of a creeping dread. Not  _ another _ problem with the warp bubble. They were still over a week from their planned rendezvous with Tri-Solon Base, and another delay would be devastating to morale.

Hers, specifically. She  _ really  _ wanted to get her ship back into a repair yard.

Aleksi spared her the necessity of asking. “What’s wrong with the warp bubble?” he demanded, spinning in his chair and looking alarmed.

“What’s  _ right _ with the warp bubble!” Esther corrected, voice filled with glee. “I was trying to figure out why the pod is matching speed with us, and I finally got it. I  _ told _ you their organic warp bubbles were more sophisticated than ours! I did tell you that, didn’t I, sir?”

“You did, LC,” Sofia said with patience she absolutely did not feel. “Repeatedly.”

“Well, I lied! Sort of.”

“Esther…”

“All right, all right, just give me a minute. The  _ adults  _ have more sophisticated warp bubbles. The babies’ warp signatures are actually very similar to, take a guess…”

“Ours?” Aleksi guessed obediently.

“Gold star. I can’t say for certain without real experimentation, but that’s sure as shit what it looks like, sir.”

Natalia cleared her throat. Esther ignored her. Sofia sighed.

“So,” she translated. “Every indication is that the creatures are matching their speed to ours, because they perceive us as one of their own juveniles.”

“It tells us something about their social structure,” Esther said, watching the pod on the viewscreen. “Because they have to know we’re not part of the pod; they found us in deep space. Either their intelligence isn’t geared toward social recognition—they’re like fish of the same species, they’ll join up in a school regardless of whether they personally know the members—or they’re so highly social that adopting a wounded orphan from another pod comes naturally.”

Aleksi cooed softly. When Sofia turned to stare at him, his eyes widened and he flushed.

“...Sorry, ma’am.”

She couldn’t blame him, if she was honest with herself. In Esther’s words, they  _ had _ just been adopted by a pod of space whales. Still, anthropomorphization was dangerous.

“The fact that they’re slowing themselves when we do  _ would  _ seem to suggest the second theory,” she allowed slowly. “Generally, non-social species won’t change the behavior of an entire...pack, or school of fish, as you say...to guard a single slow juvenile that’s not their own. Especially one they’re likely to interpret as injured, based on our slow speed and the differences in our warp signature.”

Esther dipped her head in recognition. “It doesn’t  _ have  _ to mean that though, sir. They’re not  _ really _ whales.” That was something close to the understatement of the decade, if not quite the century. “It  _ could _ just be an automatic evolutionary response to protect offspring. It might depend on if they have predators…” Her voice started to trail off as she mused. “If nothing hunts them, then they wouldn’t need high-level social bonds to display this kind of behavior; the biggest threat  _ would _ in fact be abandonment, so it would serve the species as a whole to...but at the same time, if offspring are unlikely to be hunted and the greatest threat to the breeding population is starvation between feeding grounds, assuming they feed at all, then slowing to accompany one juvenile would risk the pod as a whole for very little reward…”

Sofia glanced over her shoulder to exchange a look with her first officer. Yurovsky gave the ghost of a shrug and went back to cataloguing their personnel and weapons status, and Sofia settled in to watch Esther Hasdai chase her brain in circles for the rest of Alpha Shift.

* * *

“Hmm.”

There was something a little alarming about understated reactions from Aleksi Lehtonen.

He was good, very possibly the best helmsman of his generation; but he was jittery and anxious whenever he did anything that  _ wasn’t  _ flying, and he was not currently flying. What he was doing was frowning at his console.

The last few days had not put Sofia Matos in a mindset that enjoyed people frowning at consoles without apparent cause.

“Lieutenant?” she asked, carefully gentle so as not to startle him. He twitched like a rabbit anyway, but flashed a smile over his shoulder before turning back to his display. “Is there a problem?”

“I’m not...sure, ma’am.” Aleksi tapped in a few commands, watching the navigational readouts. “I was trying to make a course change toward Tri-Solon, but it’s difficult with the pod all around us this way.”

That was more than a little surprising, actually. The pod was bunched closely together, certainly, but Sofia had seen the navigation output as well; the gaps were well within her helmsman’s abilities.

“I might be imagining it,” he said, nervousness creeping into his voice. “But...well, watch this, ma’am?”

Ensign Sandoval obligingly switched the viewscreen to display proximity scanners without being told. Sofia frowned, and leaned forward to watch as Aleksi attempted his course change again.

At first, everything seemed normal; then, as  _ Challenger _ ’s course broke with the overall direction of the pod, there was an unmistakable shift. The adults on the starboard side of the pod shifted, drifting closer together until their warp bubbles actually brushed, forming a solid wall that forced Lieutenant Lehtonen to adjust back in line with the pod or disintegrate against it. He reduced speed, angling to duck back around them; as they had already observed, the entire pod immediately matched his adjustment.

“I see,” she said quietly.


	4. Chapter 4

**Captain’s Log, August 13th, 2154**

_Challenger _ has been kidnapped by space whales.

Whatever the explanation of their behavior, it is clear that these creatures are obeying an evolutionary drive to defend their perceived offspring. The adults are acting with intent to prevent an “injured juvenile” from wandering off from the pod or being left behind. Attempts to circumvent these measures have proven unsuccessful.

There is a very slight chance that a quick burst of high warp might allow us to slip free of the pod before the cordon closes, but our de facto Chief Engineer is currently unavailable. Dr. Atakan informs me it will be at least 36 hours before Tisarr is fit to return to duty, and the situation has become untenable.

While the pod’s protectiveness is in a way touching, we are now well past the point at which we were meant to make a course change toward Tri-Solon Base to rendezvous with NX-04 _ Discovery _ . Lieutenant Lehtonen has brought _ Challenger _ to a halt, but this has not solved the problem. 

As a matter of fact, it appears to have created a new one.

* * *

Normally, the mess hall an hour before Alpha Shift started was a ghost town. Gamma hadn’t come off shift yet, Beta was asleep, and everyone else was either showering or trying to get an extra thirty minutes of sleep.

Alternatively, they were Esther Hasdai, slumped at a table and rubbing her eyes. At least she was not alone in her torment.

“What’s the pod status?” Aleksi asked as soon as he collapsed into his chair.

“Can’t sleep either?” Atsa asked, sympathetic. If Aleksi responded, Esther didn’t hear it.

She thought about her answer for a long moment.

“Agitated,” she decided. “We have officially _ agitated _ them.”

Atsa winced. Esther waved him off.

“Not your fault, kid. It was a good idea.”

“Two years. You are older than me by _ two _years.”

“The point is.” Esther winced at her raspy voice, popped open her sports bottle, and took a long swig. “They don’t like that we’ve stopped. And they _ really _don’t like Atsa trying to boss them around.”

It really _ wasn’t _Atsa’s fault, and she wouldn’t be ribbing him about it if he didn’t know that. He’d been meticulously analyzing the communication signals used by the space whales, and while he was increasingly certain they didn’t quite constitute a language he’d been able to figure out the general meanings associated with certain patterns.

So he’d attuned their comm arrays to the same frequency, aimed the signal at the pod, and sent the pattern that, as best they could tell, was a warning to one’s neighbor to give way.

_ Agitated _ was the right word. Not _ angry _ , that was projecting too much with too little evidence. The pod had already been sending an increased number of signals ever since Aleksi slammed on the brakes; most were triangulation, regrouping the pod. But many had been directed at _ Challenger _ herself. A few give-way patterns, but for the most part they had been increasingly intense triangulation signals. The same ones exchanged periodically to confirm an individual’s position in the pod relative to its neighbors.

Esther was trying to remain scientific. Detached. This could easily be the distress of extremely uncomplicated organisms reacting to a change in homeostasis—but it _ felt _ like whales. It felt like the concern of a social species, desperately sending the same messages, over and over.

_ What are you doing? What are you doing? Why did you stop moving? You have to move, baby. You have to. Why did you stop? _

_ Please get up _.

And did it matter, really? Whether the distress was social, did that matter at all? Even bacteria would move away from harm and toward a more beneficial environment; so did it matter in that situation whether they were technically capable of feeling pain? In this one—did it _ matter, _ whether the alien creatures had cognition on a level humans would recognize?

When Atsa had tried to, in the best approximation they could manage, ask the nearest whales to get out of the way, the response had been far more intense than they’d been prepared for.

The first had been a renewed barrage of triangulation signals that had nearly short-circuited Esther’s console and had, in fact, succeeded in blowing out the speakers on Atsa’s headset. The adults had drawn their warp-bubble cordon tight again, and then started nudging them with the same signal in reverse.

“We’re confusing them,” Aleksi said, sad. He really did look like he hadn’t been sleeping, Atsa was right. “They don’t understand what’s wrong with us.”

Esther nodded and took a long, fortifying drink.

Atsa looked pained. 

“Plan B?” he asked, and there was a collective wince as a jerk of Esther’s head confirmed it.

“The only other option is to open fire on them and see what happens, and _ nobody _wants to try that.”

Not just because it would be cruel, either. These things were massive, the juveniles outmassing _ Challenger _ . In the event that the pod panicked, or worse, turned aggressive...Yurovsky had said plainly that she wouldn’t want to be in the middle of them in a _ working _ship.

The silence was long and heavy. After a moment, Atsa raised his glass of milk.

“Plan B, then, and I hope they’ll forgive us.”

* * *

It was a subdued bridge crew that arrived twenty minutes before their scheduled shift change. 

Sofia couldn’t blame them. A photon torpedo array almost felt _ kinder _, if their suspicions about the social nature of the pod were correct. A part of her almost regretted studying the creatures so closely, letting Lieutenant Sandoval figure out their communication; but of course, that was why they were out here in the first place.

“All right, everyone,” she said, as gently as she could. “Helm, you first.”

Aleksi took a deep breath, let it out, and switched off helm control, letting Challenger drift. After a moment, Sofia thumbed open her line to Engineering. 

“This is the bridge.”

_ “Engineering, we hear you.” _

“Shut her down, Ensign. Be ready to bring us back up if you have to; we don’t know how the pod will react.”

There was, again, a longer pause than a Starfleet captain would normally tolerate following a direct order; then, with a low whine, the warp core shut down and _ Challenger _ faded to silence.

Atsa put a hand over his eyes and quietly reported, “Another spike of triangulation, ma’am. No give-way signals this time. Would it be unscientific to say I think they’re worried about us?”

“At the moment, Ensign,” Sofia told him, “I think we’ll all forgive you. Esther, any change?”

“Not yet.”

Yurovsky cleared her throat. “That doesn’t necessarily mean it didn’t work, ma’am,” she said. “They may just need time.”

For a long time, they sat in silence and watched alien signals spike and jump on the viewscreen overlay. After a while, Esther sighed and turned.

“Captain,” she said. “They can—Atsa and I have been sharing our analysis of their patterns, obviously. We think, since these signals are organic to them...the same way we can tell whether our hails are being blocked, or just not being acknowledged? We think they have something similar. I’m saying…”

“They know we can still hear them.” Atsa’s voice was soft as he finished the thought.

Sofia closed her eyes for a moment. “Is there anything you can do?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Atsa turned to his console, his touch soft on the keys. “Deactivating the comm array.”

“Switching to all passive sensors,” Esther echoed, gentle as prayer. “Isolating the pod signals, adjusting ECM to block them.” She hesitated over the final keystroke, breathing something out in Hebrew that Sofia didn’t catch. Her finger pressed down over the command. “There. That should be enough.”

She seemed to be wrong, at first; the pod clustered closer, continuing their transmissions. But slowly, over the next hour, the triangulation calls slowed and stopped. Slowly, starting at barely point five warp, the pod began to drift away.

A few more spikes of that triangulation signal rippled over _ Challenger _’s silent hull.

Finally, seeming to accept that she was gone, the pod began to pick up warp speed and leave her behind.

* * *

The discovery of the “space whales” had done wonders for morale onboard _ Challenger _.

They’d brought a sense of both wonder and purpose, and Hasdai was far from the only crewman enraptured by a childlike glee. It was the next best thing to discovering dragons were real, according to many of them.

With a break from the tension that had dogged their poor ship since the moment she left drydock, however, came time to process all that had happened. The losses, the fear and pain; the isolation as well, though restoring long-range communication had helped with that much.

They’d had no choice, in the aftermath of that maiden dogfight; burials at sea were a tradition for a reason, and there had been no time for more than the most basic of shipside ceremony for their fallen.

And the Klingon fallen as well. Matos had insisted on that, and Natalia respected it. The boarders, enemy though they might have been, were _ not _ pirates; no doubt they believed themselves to be following lawful orders, defending their own people’s safety. That Starfleet meant them no harm appeared difficult for the Klingons to believe. It had been a small, separate formal ceremony, and their files said very little about Klingon funeral rites; but a simple ritual in their own language was enough.

They had time now, however. Time to breathe, and time to mourn. They knew the pod was capable of some kind of sensor detection, to have found _ Challenger _ in the first place; as long as it remained on their sensors, they couldn’t risk bringing up the warp core or even comms again. 

And so, feigning their own death as a kindness to alien creatures that had tried to care for them, the Captain had organized a memorial ceremony. Chef had provided drinks and simple foods from their rapidly dwindling supply; it wasn’t a formal occasion, though a few groups had formed of their own initiative to lead prayers and several had found other ways to honor the dead—writing letters to their families, talk of finding somewhere to set up a memorial wall for dog tags. Something that would last. 

Mostly it was an opportunity for the living to seek comfort from one another. A few people were sharing stories.

Natalia felt a slight pang at that. She hadn’t known any of the dead, not personally; many she’d never had the chance to speak to at all. It felt like a terrible failure of her role as first officer, despite the circumstances.

Still. She could feel the pain and fear soaked into _ Challenger _’s gutted frame draining away. This had been a good idea. A good idea that Natalia Yurovsky almost certainly would never have thought of on her own. She glanced across the room to where Matos was sitting beside a young petty officer with bloodshot eyes, getting the girl to laugh. Yes, this had been a good idea.

A light tone came over the intercom.

“Alpha Shift requested on the bridge,” came the relief officer’s nervous voice. “The pod has now been outside of sensor range for twelve hours.”

Smiling, Matos sat up and leaned to her left, pressing the comm panel. “Thank you, Lieutenant-Commander. We’ll be right up.”

She stood, squeezing the shoulder of the crewman she’d been consoling, and nodded to the room.

“Thank you for allowing me to share your memories of our fallen,” she told them, and received a low murmur of thanks in return. “Anyone who’s not on duty, feel free to stay as long as you need. Bridge crew...with me.”

Natalia took one last surreptitious bite of her cheese platter before slipping her plate into the recycler. Matos was holding the turbolift when she reached it, greeting her with a slight smile as she stepped through the doors; Esther Hasdai leapt through after her, just clearing the sensors in time. Lieutenant Lehtonen and Ensign Sandoval, when the lift arrived, were already at their stations.

Matos settled into her command chair; Natalia, setting her shoulders, moved into place at her captain’s shoulder.

“Helm,” Matos said, calm and clear. “Warp Two.”

Challenger rumbled under his hands, adjusting her course to compensate for the hours spent adrift; then, stars flaring brightly in the viewscreen, she surged into warp.

And moved forward.


End file.
